For the past few years my son has played junior football for a local team. The coaches are friendly, the facilities are good and, because it’s north London, the pains au chocolat they serve in the clubhouse are light and crisp and buttery. I am not bothered — genuinely, sincerely — about him becoming the best player in history and, fortunately, neither is he. He has just been happy to spend a couple of hours each weekend in a field, alternating between accidentally stomping on plastic cones, staring at passing aeroplanes and playing in madcap friendly games in which goals occur almost entirely as a result of chaos theory. And I’ve been happy to watch on, smiling indulgently, enjoying the sight of him and his mates having fun.
Only this season it’s been different. His team now plays in a proper league against opponents who are really quite good. I’m not saying they’re doing badly, but if “failure is information”, then every player on his team will need an external hard drive to cope with the amount of data they’ve been amassing. It’s been tough and occasionally tearful out there — the ego of a nine-year-old boy is as crude and unpredictable as a roadside IED — but it’s been a learning curve watching from the touchline too. I’ve already picked up a lot. For example…
Manage your expectations
As a parent, you can usually tell just by glancing at the opposition how the game is going to go. You notice that the other team all have drastic asymmetrical haircuts, that they’re engaged in crisp, synchronised, Cirque du Soleil-style warm-up routines and that a man who looks an awful lot like Pep Guardiola is watching them intently and making notes. And then you look at your child’s team and see that, with three minutes to go before kick-off, they’re arguing about Minecraft, chewing on shin pads and farting. And you have to accept it will be a long morning.
Be careful what advice you give
Before one recent fixture, I suggested to my son that he create a “siege mentality”. This, famously, is what Sir Alex Ferguson would do during his pomp at Man Utd: when his side were in a poor run of form, he would foster a powerful and motivating sense that it was them against the world. In practice, though, the only siege the under-nines managed to recreate on the pitch was Waco, with my son as a hard-running but tactically naive David Koresh.
Sort out kit the night before
For more than 30 years I’ve had a recurrent anxiety dream about not being able to find some football boots with kick-off fast approaching. Now I get to live out this nightmare every Sunday morning, only with a hangover. Freddy Krueger has nothing on this.
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Pay into the Cheer Bank
This is an unspoken arrangement between touchline parents. Basically, whenever someone else’s child does something good/passable/totally fluky, you have to explode with praise — proper bare-chested, smoking flare in each hand, Balkan derby-day passion — in the knowledge that, if and when your own child manages to make a pass or a tackle or whatever, they will do the same for them. If you’re only cheering your own child you’re a scab, and don’t be surprised if nobody offers to pick you up a croissant from the clubhouse at half-time.
Suck it up
A trillion times worse than only cheering your own child, though, is to pour scorn on them even once. I have an indelible memory of playing in a match and seeing an opposition father reduce his teenage son to tears with his constant criticism. It was awful. It didn’t make any sense either because the kid was brilliant. I had a go at the dad, and the image of his furious, impotent, beetroot face still haunts me. So today I just stand there, chewing my fingers to gristle, flashing occasional thumbs-ups and regurgitating platitudes about not giving up while forcing the desire to shout, “WHAT THE F*** WAS THAT?” into the acid bath of my conscience.
Expect the unexpected
It turns out that nine-year-olds actually respond really well to platitudes about not giving up. Because not long ago they arrived for a Sunday morning away fixture and a mad thing happened. They didn’t give up! And they won! It was a riveting game and at the full-time whistle all the parents were giddy, euphoric, hysterical. My son was happy. But when we were driving back he had moved on and was talking about books, video games, music, pseudoscience — all the usual stuff. By the time we got home, I genuinely think he’d forgotten he’d just won a match. I suppose there’s more to his life than junior football. If I can make sure the same applies to me, we’ll be fine.
Robert Crampton returns next week
